After accusing Arnold Schwarzenegger of groping her in 2000, Anna Richardson has called her lawsuit against him “traumatic” and “transformative.”
The 53-year-old TV host filed a libel suit against the 77-year-old actor, claiming he touched her breast during an interview on the ITV show Big Screen in 2000 while he was promoting his new movie, “The Sixth Day.”
The two reached an out-of-court settlement in 2006 after Arnold refuted the accusations.
“It was a terrible, traumatic event in my life, but it was also transformative and life-changing,” she said in her reflections to The i Paper.
Taking the actor to court was extremely risky, according to Anna.
‘I’m glad to say that after three years, we settled out of court, literally on the steps of London’s High Court.
‘If I’d lost, I would have been bankrupt. Without question. I would have lost the flat I co-owned with my partner. It was a huge risk, but I was absolutely determined.’
The episode:
When Schwarzenegger was a candidate for governor of California in 2003, Anna made the allegations in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, where a number of women accused the celebrity of sexual misconduct.
During the interview at the Dorchester hotel in London, she told the newspaper that although the actor had been “a perfect gentleman” in past encounters, “this time was quite different.” He was a little excited already. He kept asking if I worked out while glancing at my breasts.
‘I went to shake his hand and he grabbed me onto his knee and he said, “Before you go, I want to know if your breasts are real.”‘
Anna, who was 29 at the time, said she looked around the room for help, but no one came to her assistance.
She continued: ‘At that point, he circled my left nipple with his finger and he said, “Yes they are real.”‘
The claims were denied by Arnold’s campaign team, which stated that Anna was the one who provocatively approached the celebrity, cupping her right breast and asking, “What do you think of these?”
He apologized for having “behaved badly sometimes” and doing some things that “were not right, which I thought were playful,” in response to claims made by a number of women who claimed to have been groped by the Hollywood star.
Schwarzenegger later dismissed the claims as “old news” and declared he would not assign an investigator to investigate the women’s claims, despite having previously stated he would address the allegations’ specifics after the election.
Richardson filed a libel suit against Schwarzenegger and his top aides, Sean Walsh and publicist Sheryl Main, after the LA Times article was published. He claimed that their denials suggested that she had “deliberately and dishonestly fabricated” the accusations.
After the libel case was resolved out of court, Schwarzenegger and Richardson’s attorneys said:
‘The parties are content to put this matter behind them and are pleased that this legal dispute has now been settled.’
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During her appearance on Simply Be’s ‘Shaping Success’ YouTube series, Richardson shared her thoughts on the incident.
When host Fleur East asked Richardson to name a happy experience that had “shaped her” in life, she admitted:
‘This comes with a negative moment, it’s a yinyang thing. I had to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger in a sort of junket situation which is when you’re kind of in a sausage factory line of journalists. You go to a hotel, the star’s sitting there, you do a four minute interview with them about their film and then you leave again”.
‘And during this particular interview with Arnie – and I have to choose my words very carefully here – but there was an incident. Or there was an alleged incident between us and subsequently I took legal action and sued Schwarzenegger and his team for libel”.
‘So I have to be very careful about what I say but I sued him and we settled out of court. Now this is a great big story that’s kind of wrapped up in about 10 seconds of explanation but that moment defined me afterwards.’
Richardson acknowledged the effect it had on her career, admitting she was unemployed for two years and incurred debt.
She went on:
‘I spent a long time out of work which was really difficult. So I went from presenting a show and working in television to signing on and people in my local job centre going “are you that girl that does that show?”.. and I’m like “yeah I’m that girl, can I just get my housing benefit?”
‘So it was very difficult times but that taught me real resilience and to be unafraid to stand up to what I considered to be an injustice.’
